지적재산권 보호의 법적 근거에 관한 해석론으로서 철학적 논거

Up until now, examples of many foreign legal cases of intellectual property rights have been introduced in Korea. Furthermore, much research has been done in direct interpreting the court cases, statutes and act. But this article aims to research the legal, philosophical, economic, and social basis of the protection of intellectual property. The main objective of intellectual property law, whether technological or expressive, is the creation of new and improved works. This purpose includes not only patents, copyrights, and trade secrets but also different specific intellectual property rights protection systems. Meanwhile, trademarks and unfair competition are totally different in respect to that they focus on economic issues. They protect the integrity of the market. Intellectual property is any creative work or invention considered to be the property of its creator. Often, intellectual property rights are recognized and protected under the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights, such as the ability to publish to various markets, license the manufacture and distribution of inventions, and sue in case of unlawful or deceptive copying. There must be support and protection of intellectual property for inventors, copyright owners and artists to invest in their creation. Without such protection, others will copy or imitate the works without incurring costs and the effort of creating works, leaving the original creator with no return on his investment. The copyleft movement is naturally aligned against intellectual property rights and would prefer that all intellectual property rights be free. The arguments that justify intellectual property fall into three major categories. Personality theorists believe intellectual property is an extension of an individual. Utilitarians believe that intellectual property stimulates social progress and pushes people to further innovation. Lokeans argue that intellectual property is justified based on deservedness and hard work. The utilitarian theory has provided for some time an important paradigm for analyzing and justifying different kinds of intellectual property protection. But in order to examine the economic perspective of intellectual property, it is imperative to be able to differentiate the two different functions. The two functions are the economic incentive benefit and the cost of limiting diffusion. However, research based on the philosophical foundation is hard to find from the intellectual property law realm in Korea. Therefore, this work seeks to research the philosophical grounds of intellectual property law.